Love My Neighbor Day with Bank of America at the Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration in the City of Carson

The bucolic village at the foot of the mountain in the El Salvador jungle.  The incoming fire of rockets and mortar grenades.  The house hit and on fire.  The people running from it in horror.  This is the image by 13 year old Krystina depicting the story of her grandparents in our LoveMyNeighbor art tent at  the City of Carson Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration . The raw testimonial power of the image simply cannot leave any viewer indifferent.  The great communicative power of Art.

There were a number of works of a remarkably meaningful visual impact depicting personal family stories of children's’ great parents and great great parents which is the real world meaning of the strange word “heritage” that none of the kids knew the meaning of before.

I am deeply grateful to a remarkable group of Bank of America volunteers from Better Money Habits community outreach program who in the scorching heat worked with amazing dedication, non-stop and as long as needed.

Even inside my 20’ x 40’ tent it felt like broiling but Anh, Gwen, Maria, Sandy, Miguel and the whole team worked their hearts out tirelessly assisting me with kids and giving free financial advice to parents.

In our unique colaboration with the City of Carson and Bank of America we really developed a unique model when children  can experience art making in the professional setting, often for the first time in their lives.

There is no time to teach them how to make art in those setting, but it is an opportunity to give them an experience of being an artist. Once guided, the kids once and again show an amazing capacity for grasping the idea and purely on their own convert it into a viable and compelling visual image, producing content driven form which is a big thing to me in my own art.

Art is inherent in the way we, the humans, process the world.  Looking at amazingly powerful Krystina’s image proves it yet again.